Solutions to Physical damage mitigation in 1.4?

Hello, All!
Not sure if this has been discussed or not, but I'm curious what the community has come to find as far as physical damage mitigation for classes such as Witch and Shadow, that don't have armor options readily near them.
I ask in regards to a few changes that are either expected to come, or already have.

To start with, changes that have already happened, Block chance was slaughtered in 1.3 - Likewise, I don't believe its even viable to build high amounts of block chance anymore while still maintaining a reasonable amount of DPS for solo play. The only build that can argue this realistically are facebreakers.

Secondly, with regards to future expected changes, it was announced on the Skill Development part 2 that "It would also mean that Enduring Cry and the new Warcry skills aren't affected by "Cast" trigger gems." This would mean that options such as CwDT+EC+IC would no longer work.

So, to reiterate, Has anyone found viably consistent means for physical damage reduction in the event you did not start Marauder/Duelist and stack Block chance + Armour for days? Evasion might be an option, but with the lack of life nodes in the shadow/witch area (and acrobatics cutting ES in half), i'm reasonably sure 3 hits from a devourer would kill you in higher level areas (which wouldn't take much, considering they pack in large groups). Coupled with the fact that Hardcore only requires your RNG to be bad once for you to lose everything, I have a large amount of worries for the coming update.

Thank you for your time, All!

I'd hope these changes are being rolled out with changes to the problem mobs that make the aforementioned combo necessary in the first place.

If nothing is done, I'll probably try a perma-surgeon's flask build assuming they don't balance that.

Failing that, there's always phys damage conversion; 30%/25% from lightning coil/cloak of flame, 30% from taste of hate, even an additional 25% from Darkscorn if you feel like hitting like a wet noodle.

1.) Arctic Armor

2.) CoD

3.) CWDT + EC + IC

4.) IR (for some builds)

5.) Large HP pool + leech + immunities

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gilrad wrote:

I'd hope these changes are being rolled out with changes to the problem mobs that make the aforementioned combo necessary in the first place.

If nothing is done, I'll probably try a perma-surgeon's flask build assuming they don't balance that.

Failing that, there's always phys damage conversion; 30%/25% from lightning coil/cloak of flame, 30% from taste of hate, even an additional 25% from Darkscorn if you feel like hitting like a wet noodle.

Perma-surgeon's sounds like a nice way for crit builds =).
As for the damage mitigation armors, I Don't think that fully solves the problem, as ES Builds would be doomed =(.
On the brightside, Atleast we wouldn't have to worry about the Low-Life Epidemic anymore! ;P

I have to agree that hopefully they add more counter-play to the problem mobs such as devourers.

Thank you for your input! =) Glad to know I'm not the only one thinking about this.

Movement speed. Damage. High player reflexes.

Ever play a game like Gauntlet? The goal is to not get hit by manually dodging enemies or killing them before they can reach you.

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InsaneWallaby wrote:

Movement speed. Damage. High player reflexes.

Ever play a game like Gauntlet? The goal is to not get hit by manually dodging enemies or killing them before they can reach you.

Which is actually impossible with desync. Try again.


Meta is probably not going to be able to adapt if they don't nerf monster damage. Reams of players will quit.

Endurance charges do the trick when you have 9 or more.

Enduring Cry + Spell Echo
Immortal Call + Increased Duration

Never worry about physical damage again (also an easy, if somewhat tedious, solution for physical reflect).

Don't forget about the other enduring cry change, namely that it's going to have a much shorter animation. Self casting it will hopefully be a lot smoother than it is right now, many builds can make use of that.